PLEASE don't type all in caps, it's considered SHOUTING AND RUDE. (As I was told myself long ago.)

The mail client is the mail client; in itself it is not set up for email scanning or not. It's the AV that does that. I'd imagine Norton would work with most if not all common email programs. But there are others here who might be able to give you particulars if there is something it doesn't work with, for example.

As for alternative email programs, I like Poco mail, myself. It's payware. Don't recall that I've ever set it up for Norton, though. I don't use email scanning at present anyway.

Since email program are different and just about all payware have at least trial versions, consider what you are looking for in an email client and try them out to see. There are also freeware email programs or freeware versions of some paid programs also. If you use newsgroups you may have to get a newsgroup reader since not all email clients include a newsgroup reader as OE does.

Or if you could simply look at Netscape or Mozilla which I think also has an email client. I don't see that you need to use the browser to use the email program. For sure Norton should work with Netscape.

Another option might be to get Mailwasher www.mailwasher.net and to set your security options in
Outlookexpress to not allow attachments to be opened/saved and place outlook in the restricted sites zone Tassie devils placed a nice thread with help on these things http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=6341

Just a little bit more information. Alternative email clients to OE, such as Poco, The Bat, Foxmail, etc are more secure because the are not susceptable to the common worms that target OE and Outlook. You can still get viruses or trojans in attachments though.
When you are choosing an anti virus program, you can check and see if the provide email scanning for just certain email clients, or if they monitor on the POP3 protocol. DrWeb and now NOD32 v2 monitor POP3, so any email will be monitored.
Another good AV KAV only monitors certain email clients, but even at that it offers such good protection, that it will still catch the bad boys if you try to click on them in your email client.
SPC, I have never tried Mailwasher, but isn't it geared more to spam than to worms, viruses etc. Does it have a database that gets updated daily?
Just asking.

Yea but it has some protection as the following blurb from nick boltons site explains

Features and benefits

Bounce back unwanted e-mails so it looks as if your email address is not valid. This will make the sender think your address is no longer active so your name can be removed from their list. This unique feature is great for privacy and it couldn’t be simpler!

Delete unwanted e-mails before you download them. You’ll be able to see who the email is from, the subject, and the

attachment. This will enable you to decide if you want to delete the email or keep it. A great way to stop viruses or large attachments.

Status. MailWasher analyses each email as it arrives and warns you if it is suspected junk mail or a virus by heuristic checking and filtering. The standard status categories are - Normal, Virus, Possibly virus, Possibly spam, Probably spam, Chain letter, Blacklisted, Blacklisted by (ORDB, Spam Cop etc).

Blacklist. Any e-mails you bounce back get their senders details put on the blacklist for easy removal if they come back. You can even set it to automatically bounce and delete blacklisted e-mails, or whole domains off the server. Plus, MailWasher can use external blacklists such as ORDB, Spam Cop, VISI or you can specify your own.

Friends List. Add your friends email addresses to MailWasher and they will always be recognised. You can even hide your friends from the screen so the spam is easy to recognise.

Preview. You can preview the message in your email to see what the sender has to say before downloading it. Just double click on the message.

I mentioned this just in case Marcoavila found that another email client was not to his liking after trying them.

I find mailwasher great as although I use Mozilla and pheonix as my browsers I still use my outlook express. And the preview before downloading any mail from mailwasher is my first step always before checking any mail in my inbox. There are some additional host files that one can download into mailwasher that seems to really do the trick , I have had no spam or junk what so ever , nor have I had any virus es . However I am confident that my antivirus would jump in anyways even if mailwasher failed to recognise it .

Thanks for the reply.
I know it is a popular program and serves the need of many using OE. Using Poco, I have no requirement for such a program.
As an added layer of protection against viruses, it can't hurt. Would not want to rely on that for virus protection in emails though.
I know your don't.